Event
The Art of the Underdog Series Pass
The Art of the Underdog
Sundays & Wednesdays in March
This documentary series heralds the unsung, delights in the little-known, and excavates the forgotten tales and talents of artists across a range of practices: romance novelists, film projectionists, New Yorks last video game arcade, the power couple that conjured Hollywood magic from behind the scenes for five decades, Vietnamese carnival workers, the original radical video collective and pirate TV channel, the longest running freeform radio station in the United States, and the mysterious haunting of a dead outsider artist from New Orleans. These films are still on the festival circuit and you cant watch them online, so come through Wednesdays and Sundays in March for stimulating documentaries that champion the little guy.
The Art of the Underdog
Love Between the Covers
Mar 06 - Mar 09
(Laurie Kahn, United States, 2015, Blu-ray, 85 min)
Seattle premiere
Though scarcely acknowledged in the literary world, romance fiction is a billion-dollar-a-year industry, and it is driven almost exclusively by women. Perhaps a surprising place to find feminism, the romance novel has the potential to empower both reader and creator. In its pages some find validation, some a welcome representation of diverse notions of femininity, and to some working in the trade, romance provides a substantial, independent living.
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The Art of the Underdog
Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
Mar 06
(Daniel Raim, United States, 2015, 101 min)
Seattle premiere
Storyboard artist Harold and film researcher Lillian found success in both love and work in Hollywood, a place where marital and professional success can be hard to find and even harder to sustain. Often working alongside each other, Harold and Lillian Michelson contributed to some of the most beloved films from the heyday of Hollywood cinema. Harolds knack for framing gave us some of films most iconic shots, and Lillians research lent an authenticity to the works of Mel Brooks and Francis Ford Coppola, among others. Daniel Raim catches up with Lillian Michelson, reflecting on 60 years of marriage with her late husband, and revisits their significant contributions to some of cinemas classics. Told through interviews with Lillian, the couples old love letters and the words of some famous friends and colleagues, Harold and Lillian reveals a Hollywood love story that unfolded behind the scenes.
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The Art of the Underdog
Here Come the Videofreex
Mar 13 - Mar 16
(Jon Nealon, Jenny Raskin, United States, 2015, 79 min)
It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when new media technology wasnt immediately branded for mass consumption. In 1969, a pair of proto-documentarians stumbled upon a new invention: security cameras. Pop off the mount, and there you go: portability, playback, and a storytelling device that even broke hippies can afford.
Enter the Videofreex. A NY video co-op conceived at Woodstock, which would go on to promote video for the people, by the people, generations before the advent of social media as we know it.
This documentary by Jon Nealon and Jenny Raskin draws heavily on original Videofreex footage from the late 60s and early 70s, as the co-op intimately records a country wracked by change. They interview Fred Hampton weeks before his assassination, march with Womens Lib rallies, even document their own clubbing, arrest, and incarceration by DC riot police. The revolution is palpable in every interview, present at every demonstration and counter-demonstration: a foggy vision seen through billowing teargas. The shadows of Vietnam and The Draft and the surreality of Nixon inspire a sort of insanity, captured by the Videofreexs handheld cameras and raw interviews.
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The Art of the Underdog
Madam Phung's Last Journey
Mar 13
(Nguyn Th Thm, Vietnam, 2014, 87 min)
A former monk who left monastic life because "I saw beautiful fags praying, and felt like running away," Madam Phung is a canny businesswoman who got her start as a singer, and saved her money in the form of gold bars she would bury in the ground. Now she is something of a den mother to her largely transgender troupe - berating them when they drink or fight too much, warning them to stay out of trouble, and dealing with local police and occasionally hostile locals when necessary.
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The Art of the Underdog
The Dying of the Light
Mar 20
(Peter Flynn, United States, 2015, DCP, 94 min)
Seattle premiere
After more than a century of film, American cinemas are rapidly abandoning 35mm projection and going digital. Small screens around the country are closing down, and film projectors and projectionists put out of commission. In The Dying of the Light, Peter Flynn documents a handful of experts and enthusiasts who are trying to preserve cinemas original medium, if only in memory.
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The Art of the Underdog
Missing People
Mar 20
(David Shapiro, United States, 2015, 81 min)
A mystery about an art collector, an outsider artist, and an unsolved murder, Missing People occupies the troubled and enigmatic mind of Martina Batan, a Manhattan art curator. Martinas lifelong demon is the unsolved 1978 murder of her younger brother, Jeff. At the time, Martina was 18 years old. The violent death drove the beautiful art student into a life of insomnia, loneliness, and obsessive compulsion. Among her obsessions: the collecting of artwork by the deceased, critically underappreciated New Orleans painter Roy Ferdinand.
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LocationNorthwest Film Forum (View)
1515 12th Ave
Seattle, WA 98122
United States
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